For His Queen
by Zo One
Summary: Madness touches Spades. Cardverse; Gore; One-Shot


**For His Queen**

"Please, your Majesties, my wife is with child, I cannot simply relocate from –"

The man, prostrate on his hands and knees upon the cold, stone floor, was interrupted by squealing laughter. "Oh that's just rich, it really is!" The King, a tall man with a fierce bone structure, smiled wickedly – a look that made his features seem even more sinister despite the unadulterated joy that he spewed. "Oh, Arthur, do you hear his excuses?" he asked, turning to his husband, the Queen. "How silly this man is."

"Silly," Arthur said slowly, peering down the bridge of his sharp nose at the man before their feet, "is not the word I would use, my King. Stupid, perhaps, would suit him best. Stupid, flawed, ignorant –"

"Dead?"

Arthur's dour face twisted into a pleased look. "Very much so." The Queen raised a hand high in the air, the white of his gloves tinted yellow at the ends. "Bleed him," he announced. Three stone-faced men marched into the room, their faces painted with black ash as they held down the screaming man.

A metal tub was placed on the ground below the Queen's feet. The guards pushed the man over the tub, pulling his hair back and touched a dagger to his exposed throat. The Queen and King watched with unbridled glee as his neck was slit. They stared as his wide eyes silently accused them as he gasped for air, his red, red, blood trickling into the tub slowly.

Arthur pulled off a glove and reached forward as the man took his last few breaths, his fingers coating in the deepest of reds. "Hm. It's a bit thin," he said with a disappointed shrug.

The King tangled his own fingers into Arthur's bloody ones. He had a presumptuous frown on his face as he said, "Fill this tub for my Queen." The King kissed Arthur's stained knuckles. "Would you like his wife as well, my love?"

"You treat me so well; however can I make it up to you, my lovely King?"

Wicked smiles tore at their faces when they left their thrones, the King dancing around his bloody Queen as they ascended the gnarled staircase to their bedchambers.

* * *

The rise of King Alfred and his Queen Arthur were dark days for the Kingdom of Spades. People disappeared off darkened streets, lost children never found; mysterious red stains coated the edges of the Queen's favorite white coat.

People suspected – they were never heard of again. Death was a spectacle, buffets were served on the cold bodies of virgins, eyeless heads stared down at the feeble and quiet that walked beneath the Palace gates, and all the while the King sat at the Queen's feet, his blue eyes wide and fearsome and very much in love. For years they preyed upon the people, bathing in their blood and woes. For years King Alfred's squealing laughter filled the dead streets as he danced about skeletons with his pale husband. For years no one dared do anything, until the day they were both sentenced to death.

King Alfred's curling smile never faltered. He sat alone at his throne, the sanded wood touched with evil and madness as they pointed weapons, stained with the blood of his ashen faced guards, and accused him of his treachery.

"How sad it is that my Queen could not be here to see such a splendid show," he shouted and laughed, even as they took him from his throne and bound his ice-filled eyes with a black scarf. "Oh how very, very sad! Do you think they'll find him in Clubs?"

He laughed and chortled, occasionally shrieking in good fun as they dragged him to the rotting dungeons, the noise of blood dripping slowly, slowly, slowly, from opened bodies into tubs for baths echoed off the hardened walls.

"To die at dawn," he said to himself as his frightened captors left him, "how strange. It should be at sunset."

* * *

His Queen was as brilliant as he was cruel, traits that Alfred had always loved him for. He knew all along that something like this would happen, he prepared for it, plotted their demise on the stone walls with pictures in iron-scented red.

The bars of the cell window were loosened, and he only had to wait for them to be pulled free as he sat, listening to the gentle cadence of the dead around him. "You're here, you're here," he chanted happily, raising his bound hands to the window. "I knew you loved me."

"Hush now, my King," Arthur said; his breath was icy and crisp in the cold night air as he pulled Alfred from the cell. "Did they harm you?"

Alfred hummed to himself, happily accepting the sweet ministrations from his beloved Queen. "Not a scratch. They wanted to kill me at dawn – aren't they foolish?"

"Indeed they are, my love." The King was unbound and kissed, encompassed by the taste of bruises and hysteria. "I say we pay Matthew a long awaited visit, what say you?"

The King only smiled.

Twins were good for something after all. They gagged him as he slept, stopped him from screaming as they bound him and cut his hair with a butcher knife.

"He'll scream himself hoarse," Arthur said, blinking slowly as they pushed Matthew's still body into the cell, erecting the cell bars once more. "I say we should watch."

Alfred tried to contain his squeals of delight that night and well into the morning as they watched the guillotine fall, the flat blade splattered with dripping, red daisies, cheers and songs filled the orange sky.

The truth wasn't discovered until days later, when the head's eyes were peeled open by devious hands, finding a shade of pupil that wasn't filled with the insanity they all saw and felt. The true King was nowhere to be found, nor his husband, the cruel Queen.

Spades was saved, and yet, at the edges of the forest children went missing and people disappeared from their beds on moonless nights. Many put it off as folktales to frighten their children into good behavior, but to this day the citizens swear they can hear the squealing giggles of Alfred the Mad as he bathes his Queen in blood.


End file.
